My thoughts on the gender pay gap
With the gender pay gap headline emblazoned everywhere today, I would implore employers and recruitment agencies to pause for a moment and consider the realities behind this story.
It would be foolish to jump to conclusions that this gender pay gap is quite the “epidemic” that many are sensationally branding it. The reality is, not all companies will cheer the introduction of compulsory gender pay gap reporting, because it takes a complex set of issues and condenses it to a few headline statistics.
In Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) April 2015 Labour Market report, it was reported that just over 6 million women work part-time and so, naturally, are not able to command as great a salary. This is compared with just over 2 million men who are working part-time.
In addition to this, 1.64 million people are in temporary work (broken down by 779,000 men and 861,000 women). ONS reported that 24% of women choose to be in a temporary role as a lifestyle choice, compared to 19% of men.
Even once comparing employees in the same type of role, there are so many variables to consider; previous experience, education, their own unique abilities for instance. These all determine a person’s salary, none of which can be taken into context by macro-level comparisons on a stark spreadsheet.
Conclusively, before any further broad-brushing continues, I would welcome seeing the finer details confirmed on how the Treasury’s analysis has been conducted; data and numbers can of course be cut in many different ways. We must make comparisons between apples and apples, not apples and pears.
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9 年Wow! The issue has always been that women earn less than men for comparable roles. So working part time should not equate to less pay for the same type of work once calculated back to full time equivalent The fact women on average earn less than men for comparable work is not new, and this may just start to flush out some of the inequalities in pay. I'm not sure this is "sensationalising" anything. If you are paying women less than their male counterparts it needs addressing. On average in the UK its around 15% less.
Commercial Manager - Exa Networks
9 年Very well said, The wording from Cameron himself confirms that this "research" is not going to report on any "same job" pay gaps rather an average earning for every man compared to every woman in a company that employs over 250. No doubt the results will be sensationalized into "men are paid more than women" rather than " men work in higher paying jobs than women" and this could be for any 1 of a million reasons.